Ira Lapidus, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, Berkeley, and the founding Chair of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies on the Berkeley campus. Professor Lapidus has traveled extensively across the Muslim world and written many articles and books on Islam and related subjects. His publications include "Islam, Politics, and Social Movements," edited with Edmund Burke, and "Contemporary Islamic Movements in Historical Perspective." He is also the author of "A History of Islamic Societies," which was published in 1988 and has recently been issued in a second edition.Link to the interview: http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people3/Lapidus/lapidus-con0.html